Dominic Nicholls

Freelance journalist writing on international affairs, defence and technology plus a few random thoughts. Ex-British army and The Economist.

Dominic Nicholls is a freelance journalist writing on defence, technology, international affairs and business regulation. He is a former British army officer with service in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq. He retired from the army to write, subsequently working for The Economist and Sunday Telegraph newspapers. His blog is at www.addingtonword.com.

The project is an incredible achievement and will be of immense value to historians and future researchers as it is the first time anyone has pulled together all the records and included the next of kin. Thirteen hitherto unrecognised members of the SAS and LRDG were discovered in the course of the author's research.

The recent spat between Walmart Canada and Visa has reignited the debate about interchange; the fee paid by a merchant to customers' banks when a payment card has been used for the purchase. It is, effectively, a price to be paid for the convenience, efficiency and relative safety of card payment systems.

As merchants cannot charge different prices for cash, credit or debit payments and obviously price-in the interchange fee, those consumers using cash (e.g. those on fixed incomes such as the retired) are, in effect, paying a hidden fee. So reducing interchange fees as far as possible make sense. Or does it?